My fellow American friend here in Bogo, Cebu Philippines has a Filipino monkey named Juliet. Now, I did do a blog post featuring her back during my first visit here in August 2009, but she's too cute to not feature again. She really hated me a year ago, but it seems like we're on better terms now. Perhaps that's because I've wisely decided to always try to bring snacks to her upon my visits.
Juliet is a very interesting character. She's got quite the mean streak in her, being bourne more of insane jealousy than general animosity. She doesn't do well when a guy such as Rusty or I is feeding her snacks and a lady approaches. This usually makes her really pissed off. She's not a fan of my friend Elly at all.
Juliet is very gentle when she reaches with her tiny little hand to grab snacks from either my fingertips or from the flat palm of my hand. In these photos, I was feeding her chips, which she really likes, although I recently gave her a bunch of local Tobi peanuts (already shelled before packaging) and she loved those .
When you approach with snacks, she gets excited and begins making cute ittle chirping noises. She's very smart and remembers pretty much everything. She appears to display both good short- and long-term memory. My friend Elly made Juliet mad once and then upon Elly's next visit Juliet immediately grunted at her before she even got withing 50 feet of the cage.
Juliet does ok. She seems to live a pretty good life. Many might say that buying a monkey as a pet simply perpetuates the problem of people going into the jungles and stealing baby monkeys away from their mothers. But it seems like Juliet is living a pretty happy and contented life here, and I know she surely has a much better owner than she could have ended up with. I'm looking forward to the debating that may ensue in the comments after this post. Feel free to ask any questions you want to about Juliet, and I'll try to answer them all to the best of my knowledge. I'll be happy to record some video of her as well, if somebody asks me to do so.
For starters, I wince when I read the words "Filipino monkey" not only in one sentence but as a unit like "Filipino monkey". Believe me, there is nothing Filipino in this monkey named Juliet.
ReplyDeleteA sweet dependent baby monkey will eventually grow up, and become the wild animal it was meant to be. Unfortunately, raising a monkey around humans doesn't change the wild nature of monkey, and in fact depriving a pet monkey of normal social relationships with other monkeys can create behavior problems and neuroses.
ReplyDeletesedate the money, crack its skull open and eat its brain.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous no. 3, you are one hell of a sick bastard! you don't even have the balls to give yourself a name or identify yourself! Oh, that's right, you don't have any balls at all, that is why you are so brave to make such cowardice comments under the mask of anonymity. So why don't you go and suck balls for the day, huh?
ReplyDeleteIts like Joe to make a controversial topic his last entry for a time, and then go MIA during the fodder....
ReplyDeleteLove ya buddy.
Hope things are well.
This Anonymous guy has a lot of opinions and they rarely are mutually exclusive. Eating monkey brain will make you dumber and more aggressive than you are already. If no one had a pet monkey then no one would know any of these things.
Hi, everybody, I've been really busy running around quite a bit lately, so I"m glad to be back on the blog now.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, it was my understanding that this type of monkey was indeed from the Philippines, although perhaps your referring to the "Filipino monkey" racial slur instead of the context in which I used the term. I remember a time when a guy posted a comment on one of Rusty's blogs (either www.CebuExperience.com or www.HeyJoe.ph), declaring that Filipinos in general are "tree monkeys" or something like that. It really pissed off a lot of people, including Rusty, myself and of course lots of Filipinos. When some 18-year-old girls from Pasil Cebu visited as my houseguests for a while about a month ago, I remember commenting to some other pinay that my guests were kind of like a bunch of monkeys. This was because they all acted exactly like 18-year-old girls normally do, moreso in a a cute snd relatively crazy way, but nonetheless sweet and kind as well. Having myself, my girlfriend, our friend Elly and also four of our friends all here in the house at the same time did make it feel more like a zoo than a house, but we had a good time. But my point is that I don't want anybody to ever think that I'd say something like "Filipino monkey" in any kind of derogatory context or as a racial slur.
Anonymous, I understand that it sucks how people steal baby monkeys from their natural habitat for purposes such as selling them, and vit is indeed sad to see such a magnificent creature locked up in a cage. I know that buying a monkey perpetuates the cycle of poaching more of them, but at the same time I know that Rusty has given Juliet a safer and happier home than many other prospective buyers would have. It is indeed a cruel cycle of people knocking baby monkeys out of trees and stealing them away from their mother or even killing her to make the process easier, only to sell them and repeat the process time and time again. If everybody would boycott those monkeys for sale, that could discourage the poachers from continuing their poaching but also the monkeys already in captivity awaiting sales could suffer even more from it. It's definately a two-way street, and I doubt that anybody could ever convince me of a viable solution to this paradox.
Anonymous, I'm assuming that you were making a reference to that old 1978 film "Faces of Death" in which the producers faked a graphic scene where tourists supposedly ate the brain of a living monkey. For anybody who hasn't seen that old piece of crap (a "documentary" claiming to be authentic and real, but with numerous factual and continuity errors), the monkey brain-eating scene was of the fake variety. The filmmakers eventually admitted that it was fake, done with special effects and make-up. To do that scene, a monkey handler was even on location to ensure that the monkey would not be harmed in any way. But as a somewhat experienced traveller, let me offer sage advice to any future tourists in an exotic locale faced with an opportunity to eat some exotic and strange foods: Just pass on it, don't bother eating a goat's head, some kind of brain, eyes, whatever. Anything like that would just taste crappy anyhow, so just say "No thanks" to that testicles sampler platter and go get yourself some good old-fashioned fried chicken instead. I've eaten some fairly exotic and strange things, and I'll take bbq pork chops instead of cat lungs or whatever any day.
F, I know it sucks I've allowed things to lag again, but I've had a completely insane time here lately. I want to type up a long narrative just to get everybody up to speed on a particular 3-day period of time which was really strange.
JOE, Enjoyed your recent posts. My wife, who is from Bogo, has been in Calif with me for 4 weeks now. We are having a great time. She misses her large family in Bogo and looks forward to a trip back. I am hoping to bring her back to Bogo for a few weeks over in about 6 months, depending on the visa rules, as she is on a spousal visa, and needs to stay in US. Still want to hear about the Camotes and your time in Bogo. Doug in Calif.
ReplyDeleteSee You in 9 or 10 days, Be careful have a wonderful trip.
ReplyDeletedude, you have yet to write in quite some time.
ReplyDeletehope things are well with you. i visit this blog to catch up with your adventures a couple times each week. disappointed that it seems to have been a while..
To Kristopher and everybody else, I'm sorry that I've let so much time pass by without any new posts or even responding to comments. I've had some rough times, got burnt out, fairly disgusted and disenchanted, and now I'm trying to will myself to hulk up and emerge from this funk. I suppose that this is a decent first step in that direction, and I'l try to get things going again soon.
ReplyDeletehmmm i meet juliet,,,and shes kinda scary lol,,she grab my hair and so for windy too,,,coz she loves joe,,and she hates girls standing next to joe,,,hahaha
ReplyDeletemaybe it's time to come back to the motherland (aka north america) again haha.
ReplyDeleteJoe, I will be visiting Manila/Makati to see friends and family from March 30th - April 11th.
perhaps you might be interested and available to meet up! looking forward to experiencing Phils from my own perspective finally.
by the way, i can understand. im sure theres just so much to do and see and experience that its easy to to neglect the routine of sitting down in front of a computer (even a laptop, wherever you might be at any given time) to regurgitate your stories and experiences with everyone.it's exaustive to do that too often.
ReplyDeleteas long as people are informed and still alive and make the effort to update once in awhile every month or so, we will all be pleased..
I am Rusty and the monkey was a rescue. She had been captured by a farmer near Bogo City. He put her on a pole with no shelter and very little food. She had been "stealing" his corn.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got her she was nearly dead, shivering as she couldn't maintain her body temperature. I didn't know if she would live or die. She needs to be in the wild but that just isn't possible.
She's a wild animal, not a pet and she belongs in the wild. It makes me sad to see her in that cage. The last time I tried to get her out, she bit me so she's not been out in a while. :(
Comments are moderated.
ReplyDeletewhat happened to joe ? it has been months..
ReplyDeletecan you lead any of who may be interested to where we can read more about this ?
ReplyDeleteIt was in the sunstar newspaper last month, Joe Bogo was busted in Bogo Cebu, video taping underage girls. He is in Prison now
ReplyDeletekris. I agree with you 100%
ReplyDeletejust make the appropriate measures so that they have to sign-in/create account in order to make a comment. easier for you.
ReplyDeleteDid exactly that last night!
ReplyDeletethees monkey is so intelligent :)
ReplyDeleteBildretusche
Awesome monkey photo.. Which camera use in photograpy..
ReplyDeletego pro cameras